NEIGHBORHOOD REPORT: PELHAM BAY PARK

NEIGHBORHOOD REPORT: PELHAM BAY PARK; George Washington May Have Made Par Here

By SHARON SEITZ

Published: May 2, 2004

Armed with maps new and old, historians and golf officials recently searched the Split Rock Golf Course in Pelham Bay Park in the Bronx for traces of a long-forgotten remnant of American history, a road and a stone wall that played an important role in the Revolution.

It was not just an academic exercise. The American Golf Corporation, a private company that manages the municipal golf course under a contract with the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, is making substantial improvements to the course, and that plan has raised historians' concern.

''We are not seeking to take an adversarial position,'' said Don Gilligan, a member of the Bronx Historical Society who organized the trip. ''My aim is to document this historical asset, and make American Golf aware of its presence to ensure that it is not destroyed by any improvements made to the golf course.''

After investigating several places, historians were fairly certain they had located the old Split Rock Road and the wall in an overgrown area along the west side of the course.

If they are correct, that is the spot where, on Oct. 18, 1776, in a confrontation known as the Battle of Pelham or the Battle of Pell's Point, Col. John Glover and his troops fought from behind the wall and held off a British attack long enough to allow George Washington and his soldiers to retreat safely to White Plains.

American Golf, based in California, manages 250 courses in the United States and Britain. It was recently awarded a 20-year contract to manage and upgrade 6 of the city's 13 public golf courses.

''We applaud what they're doing,'' John Flaschner, a spokesman for American Golf, said of the research. The company would be ''sensitive to the site's history,'' he added, but he declined to comment on specific plans for the course since, as he put it, they aren't ''even close to being finished yet.''

At the least, Mr. Gilligan said, he would like to see the site cleared of brush, identified with a historic marker and listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Robert Trent Jones II, the renowned golf course architect who will redesign the course, happens to be a history buff, a fact from which Mr. Gilligan took heart. Maybe the course can capitalize on its historical connection, Mr. Gilligan said, ''and name a tournament in honor of Colonel Glover.'' SHARON SEITZ